Letter to the Editor: My Sandy vote was the right one

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A recent commentator criticized my opposition to the so-called Hurricane Sandy emergency relief bill, going so far as to call it “unpatriotic.”

Your readers might be interested to know that more than 90 percent of this bill (that will cost every American family an average of $450 in taxes) had nothing to do with emergency relief for storm victims.

Indeed, $16 billion went to quintuple the size of the Community Development Block Grant Program. That’s the slush fund that pays for such dubious projects as doggie day care centers — and it doesn’t even have to be spent in the hurricane area.

The bill set aside $2 billion for highway repairs anywhere in the country — including up to $20 million each for Guam, American Samoa and the Mariana Islands that aren’t even in the same ocean as Hurricane Sandy!

Before voting against the measure, I offered an amendment to restrict funding for emergency relief for this year, but it was refused.

I would suggest that a closer definition of “unpatriotic” is to use a tragedy like Hurricane Sandy as an excuse to spend billions of dollars on political pork, or to take cheap political shots against those who sounded the alarm.